Comments on Existence is Wonderful: On Modern Forays Into Nostalgia

kakalina: Regarding Hannah Poling: to me it...

2008-03-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

kakalina: Regarding Hannah Poling: to me it sounds like she was born with a rare mitochondrial disorder, and was eventually diagnosed with a form of encepalopathy (which basically just means "brain malfunction", at least according to Wikipedia) that may have been exacerbated by a post-vaccination fever.

So, to me, it sounds like a case where a kid with a pre-existing physical issue experienced behavioral and neurological(?) changes after a fever.

I don't get how people are acting as if this incident represents some kind of breakthrough or "victory" for the antivaxers. There's nothing new or revolutionary about either the idea that some people might be vulnerable to vaccines, or that some people end up getting compensated for supposed adverse effects. Payouts have been made to various families in the past by the Vaccine Injury Compensation fund, which was established both to assure adequate vaccine supply and distribution, and address situations in which individuals may be experiencing adverse vaccine reactions.

Heck, even the CDC (considered the "evil empire" by some) has a list of vaccine contraindications on their website -- that is, they actually list groups of people for whom vaccines may cause adverse reactions, such as persons with severely compromised immune systems. All medicine represents a certain degree of risk, and as far as medical interventions and preventative measures go, vaccines are pretty darn safe as compared to a lot of other things. And they're certainly a heck of a lot safer than things like measles, polio, and whooping cough.

So, basically, I don't have any problem believing that yes, this girl might have ended up with brain changes after experiencing a post-vaccination fever, or that people with rare mitochondrial disorders might be especially vulnerable to fevers and immune reactions. There's nothing particularly weird or "shocking" about that, or about the fact that the child in question here started exhibiting "autistic-like features" following her post-vaccine illness (especially since practically anything out of the behavioral norm seems to be getting chalked up to "autism" these days -- have you read about the studies on mice where the researchers attempted to claim that "excessive grooming to the point of drawing blood" meant that the mice were autistic?).

But it's a HUGE (and inappropriate) stretch to do what some people are attempting, which seems to range from claiming that this incident "proves" a vaccine-autism link to claiming that "autism should be reclassified as a mitochondrial disorder". The media coverage of this incident has been utterly dreadful.

(This reminds me, though, I really need to make a post one of these days on what I think "autistic" actually means...for now I will say that I think it has a lot more to do with how people perceive, process, and learn than what they appear like on the surface, or what things they can or cannot do at any particular point in time. But it's a lot harder to test for and quantify "how" than "what", which is why I am very pleased to see people studying autistic cognition since cognitive science is very much attuned to the idea that how people perceive and approach and think about situations and problems is extremely important with regard to understanding the brain and all its diverse manifestations.)

For a lack of a better place to comment, I'm posti...

2008-03-11T15:39:00.000-07:00

For a lack of a better place to comment, I'm posting it here.
Did you hear about the recent case about Hannah Poling (I think that's her name) who reportedly developed autism-like symptoms after a bout of vaccines she was given back in 2000? The Federal Court has ordered reparations to the family for this, and there is much concern in many organizations that various groups of people who believe that vaccines are the cause for Autism will point their fingers at this case as evidence (*hmph* they're just looking for some scapegoat to sue). I'm sure that you've been keeping close tabs on the case, but I thought that I'd mention it.

I'm having fun reading the comments on this post ;)

Hey Anne,

I just recently stumbled upon you...

2008-03-09T18:03:00.000-07:00

Hey Anne,

I just recently stumbled upon you and your blog (via WTA BoD) and I must say I really like your attitude and your view on many things. Can't share your optimism all the time (how are you doing that?), but will try my best, and your optimistic stand is infecting (i need more of that stuff ;-)

In priciple i agree with you on many topics (although i'm still working on myself to make my reality of life fitting better with my theoretical views and oppinions).

I would appreciate to hear more podcasts from you, are you planning to go on with some recordings?

I also would like to thank you for mentioning Joanna Newsom in the comments: after a longer term the first really great artist i discovered. she's so wonderful, genius. Reminds me on Björk. Maybe you want to try her (first?) album, Walnut Whales, too. Sounds not as professional as Ys, but especially the first two tracks are just...ehm...perfect.

That's all I wanted to say for the moment. Keep on going well, and try to ignore my bumpy english ;-)

Insightful and eloquently put as always Anne, espe...

2008-03-06T22:30:00.000-08:00

Insightful and eloquently put as always Anne, especially the concluding paragraph. "The more abstract the truth you want to teach, the more thoroughly you must seduce the senses to accept it." Have you ever read Nietzsche? He is by far the most entertaining (though certainly not the wisest) philosopher I have ever read.
Please check out my website when you have the chance: alexandrianphilosophy.org

Hi Marla -- I started typing you a reply (regardin...

2008-03-03T00:08:00.000-08:00

Hi Marla -- I started typing you a reply (regarding money and how I learned to deal with it), but it got really long so I figured I would email it to you. So I sent you an email...I have a yahoo address so if you don't see something from me in your inbox soon, you might want to check your bulk folder.

I saw a comment you made on Autism Vox's post in r...

2008-03-02T20:09:00.000-08:00

I saw a comment you made on Autism Vox's post in regards to money. Our daughter has really struggled with learning about money. You mentioned your parents helped you a lot with money skills as a child. Can you remember anything different that they did to help you? I would love some tips in regards to teaching my daughter money skills, an area very very difficult for her.

I too love having the internet to verify old memories from films, cartoons, etc. Often, when we are watching a movie we will look up what a certain actor has been in before rather than being unbale to sleep wondering.

I like Joanna Newsom, too.

For those you do...

2008-03-02T08:23:00.000-08:00

I like Joanna Newsom, too.

For those you don't know her latest album, the NYT has a complete MP3 of "Emily" as supplementary to its Newsom profile*.

I think I like the equally expansive "Monkey & Bear" more than "Emily", though :-)

And there was an "epic-length" article about Newsom in an older issue of the esoteric Arthur Magazine. The profile starts on page 12 of pdf file no. 1.

* Link should work for non-registered users.

FrF

Oh, and on the subject of complex, highly "crafted...

2008-03-01T16:03:00.000-08:00

Oh, and on the subject of complex, highly "crafted" music, another album that has wowed me recently is Ys by Joanna Newsom. Some people find her voice extremely irritating, but I really like it for some reason, and the musical arrangements (and lyrics) on Ys have a wonderful sweeping fantastical quality to them.

Thanks, Franz, for the recommendations. I have ac...

2008-03-01T13:01:00.000-08:00

Thanks, Franz, for the recommendations. I have actually heard "A Day At The Races" -- I just don't personally own it. And "You Take My Breath Away" is definitely a standout track. I'm going to poke around at the used CD store today (well, they sell new CDs too but I usually check the used racks first because I'm cheap like that), though, so if I see it I will pick it up.

Anne, I don't see "A Day At The Races", the compan...

2008-03-01T12:47:00.000-08:00

Anne, I don't see "A Day At The Races", the companion album to "A Night At The Opera", on your list. You should get it and maybe "Jazz", too. Both records won't enrich your picture of Queen dramatically but complete it nicely. Especially "A Day At The Races" has some fine songs: "You Take My Breath Away", another extravaganza of layered harmonies by Freddie and "Long Away", a quasi-folk-song by Brian May. John Deacon's tender "In Only Seven Days" from "Jazz" is also great.

You may like "Flash Gordon", though it's slight in terms of quantity. (I doubt that the whole record amounts to 30 minutes without the dialogue snippets from the movie.) There are, however, some good, to use your phrase, pre-dancey instrumental tracks. Unfortunately the charmingly wacky pulp commentary "Flash Gordon" is as far from hard SF as it is possible :-)

There's this well-known anecdote that Queen did so much overdubs on their second album that they physically wore down the recording tape until they could see through it! It isn't hard to believe this actually happened when one listens to Queen II.

FrF

Franz: Yep, I'm very much a Queen fan, tho...

2008-03-01T11:33:00.000-08:00

Franz: Yep, I'm very much a Queen fan, though I'd not listened much to them since I started primarily getting my music on CD (almost all my Queen albums are on cassette tape). My favorite albums of theirs are still "Queen II" and "A Night At The Opera". And I totally agree with regard to appreciating Queen as a "studio band" moreso than an "arena rock" band -- you're not a complete exception! I think the studio setting really allowed them to experiment more and just geek out with audio equipment and track overlays, with brilliant results. I sort of wish they'd done more of that, since they were so darned good at it.

Early Queen seems almost like classical composition, where the composer sort of visualizes different parts in their head and then "engineers" them together to create something multidimensional and wonderful. I really, really like that kind of thing, and frankly before I got into Queen I'd not been very interested in "rock" at all: if you'd asked me what my favorite musical style was when I was 11 years old, I'd have said "classical". My favorite song in grade school for a long time was "Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor" by Bach (though I was also fond of some of my parents' 80s record singles like "Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats), and I was also obsessed with Star Wars and its symphonic theme music.

I haven't actually heard the Flash Gordon soundtrack -- the albums I own (on cassette, CD, MP3) are Queen II, A Night At The Opera, Sheer Heart Attack, News of the World, and Queen's Greatest Hits (the navy-blue one and the maroon one). I've also got some miscellaneous tapes with songs on them that I randomly recorded from the radio that are from other albums, but not much of that. And I've seen Highlander and heard the songs from that film, some of which are kind of fun. But truly, the stuff I'm a Major Fan of happened prior to 1980 -- I love the bombastic dark fantasy vibe of Queen II more than words can express. :D

kakalina:

The thing your parents are...

2008-03-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

kakalina:

The thing your parents are describing re. the old TV shows -- yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about in my post. It IS amusing and a bit creepy -- part of it feels like when you think a character in a story is dead and you've sort of come to terms with them being dead, but then you find out that they are still alive. It's a weird, neat feeling.

I had sort of half-resigned myself to some of the shows I recalled from a long time ago having been "lost to history" but I was wrong, and it's fascinating how people with little bits and pieces of recollection (or film, or old tapes) are piecing all that together and managing to re-create the original entity to some extent.

And regarding the anime you mention (Gunslinger Girl) -- I haven't seen or read that one, but it does sound pretty interesting. I am actually quite an anime geek though it's not the main thing I write about online -- it just seems like anime dips into a lot of themes that Western stuff either doesn't touch or doesn't prioritize as important. The first "serious" anime I saw was Neon Genesis Evangelion -- it was funny because I had a t-shirt showing some of the characters from the show, that I'd gotten long before I even knew the show existed (I got the shirt because I liked it and didn't even know it had anything to do with a show in the first place).

And someone in my math class turned out to be in the school anime club and saw my shirt and commented on it, and subsequently was shocked I hadn't seen the series. He let me borrow a video tape of the first few episodes, and I was so blown away by it (since I'd never seen ANYTHING animated that intense before) that I eventually ended up getting all the DVDs. There was a lot of material in there about power and control and definitions of what "life" is, and the ethics of experimentation and warfare and weird quasi-boundaries between good and evil...I know now that series isn't even the most intense one out there, but it was my first exposure to certain ideas that I now think about quite often.

Some of what you're describing about Gunslinger Girl sort of reminds me of the movie "The Professional", which also included a little girl being trained as an assassin. I found that movie compelling but highly disturbing in some respects -- in this case the girl wanted to be trained as an assassin, because she'd basically had her life saved by a guy who was one, which I think made her kind of romanticize the whole thing. Weird stuff, but definitely interesting.

I don't know if you'd be interested in this or not...

2008-03-01T08:04:00.000-08:00

I don't know if you'd be interested in this or not, but there is an interesting Japanese Manga/Anime called Gunslinger Girl, which is about a group of girls who were at one point in their lives on the verge of death. But then the government (Italy) took over custody of them from their parents, and gave them these implants that granted them full health, enhanced strength and reflexes, and increased tolerance and threshold for pain and damage.

The girls were then given a "handler", a man, who trained them, looked after their welfare, and accompanied on their "missions", because these girls were basically turned into miniature assassins. Part of their "training" was something called conditioning, which was brainwashing to the point that the girl had %100 blind loyalty to their handler. So, you have these astonishingly strong little girls (pre-pubescent) who were sharpshooters and unquestionably derferent to their handlers to the point that they wre basically in love with them

It's a very dark show, but it brings up a lot of interesting questions, so I thought I'd run it by you (Wikipedia has a good entry on it).

Oh, I'm happy to see that Anne is a Queen fan, too...

2008-03-01T05:39:00.000-08:00

Oh, I'm happy to see that Anne is a Queen fan, too!

I was as hardcore a fanatic from the age of 14 to, say, 20 as you can imagine. Accidentally, Queen's "Flash Gordon" soundtrack was the first record I ever bought. But then I really immersed myself in their world with the Complete Works box set which had 14 vinyl LPs. I'm probably an exception insofar as Queen as a studio project was always much more important than Queen the live band. I think they dumbed down their music with those gargantuan arena shows of, especially, the 80s.

My favorite song of Queen II was for a long time "March of The Black Queen". I particularly liked that passage around the line "Put them in the cellar with the naughty boys" where all those off-kilter choirs culminate to exhilarating effect.

FrF

A very interesting post.
I am far too young to...

2008-03-01T05:34:00.000-08:00

A very interesting post.
I am far too young to have experienced anything like what you're describing, and my experience with the internet has been somewhat less gratifying (I have been looking for a volleyball term for a specific kind of set for close to ten months now, with no success beyond the place where I originally read about the term).
On the other hand, one night when my parents were talking about old TV shows they watched when they were kids (in the 50's and 60's), my Mum, a librarian, hopped online and found a website devoted to oldies children shows. It was both amusing and occasionally a little creepy. ;)